


Thanks

by SquaresAreNotCircles



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, alpha pack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 11:10:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SquaresAreNotCircles/pseuds/SquaresAreNotCircles
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There was no need for grand gestures, but Stiles would have appreciated a simple thank you. After all, saving someone's life on an almost daily basis was rather hard work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Thanks

The woods were completely silent. Stiles could hear his own breath, but that was all. There was no background noise, not even the wind seemed to rustle through the dry autumn leaves. Scott looked at Stiles with large, shocked eyes. “Why is it so silent?” he whispered, automatically adapting the volume of his voice to the lack of sound.  


“Don’t ask, dude,” Stiles hissed. “That’s like the biggest horror movie cliché _ever_.”

“But-” Scott was cut off by a growl. Stiles spun around and was just in time to jump out of the way of the female werewolf aiming for his throat. Barely half a second later, another large animalistic form appeared from between the trees, tackling the first one to the ground. Derek. Before Stiles even had time to do more than blink in confusion at the sudden outburst of furious growls and snarls, Scott was occupied by fighting the second of the three alphas they’d been trying to avoid. Stiles was starting to get a bad feeling about where this was going.

And of course, he was right. Paying better attention to the shadows, he spotted the third and last alpha. The tall, broad-shouldered man seemed to be approaching Derek from behind, while Derek was still busy not getting killed by the female alpha. Stiles sighed, sucked in a deep breath and started waving his arms. “Hey! Scumbag, over here! Yeah, that’s right, I mean you. What are you waiting for? Afraid of the big bad human?” The pair of blazing raid eyes had locked onto Stiles now and the wolf was slowly advancing on him. So far so great; step one of his plan had succeeded. The problem was that he hadn’t really worked out yet what step two was. “Shit,” he cursed.

The wolfman just grinned, showing two rows of pearl white, scarily pointy teeth.

“Shit,” Stiles repeated.

He stumbled back two steps, but he knew trying to outrun a werewolf was a hopeless endeavor. He looked around and grabbed a handful of dry leaves from the ground, for lack of anything better to defend himself with. He had no freaking clue what he was going to do with them, but on the upside his attacker seemed to be just as confused as to his intentions as he was.

He decided his best defense would be a good offense, even if it was ninety-nine percent fake. At least it would buy him some time. He started yelling again, sounding much braver than he was. “I’d think twice about mauling me, if I were you. Look what I have here!” He held up his hand with foliage. The alpha was not exactly trembling with fear, but he lifted one eyebrow, listening. “Yes, that’s right. Deaton taught me some more magic tricks. I suppose you know what mountain ash and wolfsbane can do to your kind? Well, fancy finding out what _this_ does?”

“You’re making this up.” The man’s voice was surprisingly human, considering his everything else looked rather wolf-like. However, that was not what worried Stiles about this first sentence the alpha had spoken.

“Try me,” he responded, doing his very best to sound self sure and defiant, even though he was lying trough his teeth.

“I think I will.” The werewolf was grinning again, coming closer to Stiles once more. Stiles gulped and frantically searched his brain for anything else to say, coming up with a grand total of a lot of panicked nothing. Just when Stiles was certain his life was about to meet a premature and overly gruesome end, someone jumped the alpha from behind.

Stiles looked the other way and made sure to keep a relatively safe distance from the two mythical monsters attempting to rip each other’s throats out, until he heard someone yelp and beat a hasty retreat. Only then did he dare looking up again, to see Derek stalking towards him. A bit further away, Scott was still fighting the second alpha, but it was very obvious he had the upper hand, and apparently it was so sure he was winning Derek didn’t even think it was necessary to come to his rescue as well.

Instead, Derek sent a disbelieving look in the direction of Stiles’s right hand, in which he now realized he was still holding some useless brown leaves. “What were you planning to do with those?” Derek asked, disapproval dripping from his voice.

Stiles had no patience for Derek’s strange moods right at that moment. “Hey dude, don’t diss me. I just saved you life, a ‘thanks, Stiles’ would be awesome. I mean, _thank you_ for saving mine, but I’d really appreciate some acknowledgement for my own efforts as well.”

Derek just scowled at him. Stiles took that as a sign that he would most likely not be getting a fruit basket for his trouble.

***

Stiles was not going to play the part of the guy with the getaway car that was on call at all times. It was no more his duty to do this than it was Lydia’s or Allison’s, considering they were just as much human and part of the pack as he was. Still, he couldn’t very well just ignore a text from Derek saying _warehouse attacked. pick me up behind library asap._ If by ‘attacked’ Derek meant he’d gotten a visit from the alpha pack, he was likely to be in some serious trouble. And as much as Stiles had once hated Derek, he was at least an acquaintance by now, if not some sort of friend, and you didn’t just let down acquaintances or sort-of-friends if they asked for a ride. Not even if they asked you to meet them in some dark, gloomy alleyway in the middle of the night, even though Stiles was absolutely sure he could not be blamed for hesitating for a second once he realized that his was exactly what Derek asked of him this time.

When he arrived at the back entrance of the Beacon Hills public library, Derek was nowhere in sight. Stiles debated whether or not to turn off the engine of his beloved blue jeep, in the end deciding to keep her running. Gas was expensive, but if he spared the environment he would regret it once Derek appeared out of nowhere with five angry alphas on his tail and they needed to get away _fast_ \- which Stiles was almost fifty percent sure would become reality within the next ten minutes.

Only it didn’t. Ten minutes passed, and nothing happened. Twenty minutes, and Stiles was starting to wonder if Derek had gained a sense of humor and this was a misguided attempt at a prank call. Half an hour, and he was about to give up and just go back to bed. Just then, the passenger side door was jerked open and a large, Derek-shaped figure jumped in, growling: “Drive, idiot!”

Stiles was dying to get some answers as to what was going on and why the hell Derek had made him wait thirty minutes before deeming it worthy to turn up after all, but even he knew those things would have to wait. He hit the gas.

“Anywhere specific you want to be going?” he asked some time later, once they were getting close to the edge of town.

“No. Just turn around, but don’t go near the library or the warehouse.”

Stiles glanced over at Derek for the first time, taking in the dried blood staining his shirt. It was a good thing werewolves had super healing powers, because he would not have appreciated Derek bleeding on his seats. “What happened?”

“Two of the alphas chased me from the warehouse. I was fast enough to escape, but another one was waiting for me outside. I managed to shake him off as well.”

“In the figurative sense, or physically shaking off?”

Derek’s silence sufficed as an answer.

“Great,” Stiles mumbled. The alpha pack kept getting more aggressive and less wary of crossing the invisible lines they should be respecting. This was a real issue and Stiles would have to address it with Derek and the rest of their pack, but he was too tired to discuss it right then. “You know,” he remarked instead, choosing the first topic that came to mind in order to distract Derek, “I just saved your ass again. I don’t even know how many times I’ve done that by now.”

“I know,” Derek answered shortly. He didn’t seem to think he needed to waste any more words on the subject. “Drop me off somewhere, I can hide around town.”

Stiles frowned. “But you’ll have nowhere to sleep.”

“I’ll think of something.”

“No way, that’s stupid. You’re coming with me,” Stiles decided. “My dad is out of the state this weekend anyway, for some conference or whatever. You can sleep on the couch.”

Derek was silent for a few seconds. “Okay,” he eventually agreed, so Stiles took a right turn, heading for his house.

***

After receiving a panicked phone call from Scott hastily informing him the alpha pack had been at the warehouse _again_ and the pack was injured, Stiles couldn’t get into his car fast enough. He completely ignored the speed limit, driving his poor old jeep as if he was trying to reenact parts of his laps around the tracks in Need for Speed. It wouldn’t have surprised him if he had driven his car into a tree somewhere along the road, with the way his mind was already mostly at his destination, but somehow he managed to make it to the warehouse alive and in one piece.

He wasn’t sure whether he should be relieved or even more worried at the lack of the sound of fights going on inside the big metal building when he arrived. He decided not to give it much thought at all, and just hurried inside.

The scene that greeted him was horrible, but less so than he had half feared, half expected. There was probably enough blood smeared on the walls and pooled on the floor to fill a fully grown human, but at least the five werewolves licking their wounds in the middle of the room all seemed to be relatively fine. Boyd had a claw wounds all the way across his chest that weren’t completely done healing yet, Jackson looked like Scar from the Lion King with the cut on his face and Erica was softly whining at the agonizing pain of her apparently completely crushed right leg healing itself, but Stiles couldn’t notice anything wrong with Scott or Isaac apart from some torn clothing and lots of dirt and blood that hopefully wasn’t all the pack’s. At least at first glance no one seemed to be in any serious danger.

Still, there was no question what his first words would have to be. “Is everyone okay?” he asked, before he had even fully reached the group.

Scott seemed relieved to see him. “Yeah, looks like it. The alphas are gone, I think.”

If that was true, it would definitely be categorized in the saddeningly empty folder in Stiles’s mind reserved for unexpected pieces of luck. “Where’s Derek?”

Scott shrugged, a little tense. “Outside somewhere. He went after the last one, that woman.”

“On his own?”

“Yeah.” Stiles was already on his way out of the warehouse again when Scott called after him. “Hey, where are you going?”

“To find Derek.”

“Should I come with you?”

Stiles shook his head. “No, stay there, heal. I think I’ll be alright. I hope.”

“Be careful!” was the last thing he heard Scott tell him, before he stepped out into the night again. He jogged towards the tree line and decided to simply walk straight into the forest, in hopes of encountering something that would guide him in Derek’s direction. He didn’t have to walk far before he stumbled over the most obvious sign possible: Derek himself.

He was lying on the ground, very still, and didn’t look good. Even in the darkness Stiles could see he was pale, but that seemed only logical considering the three deep gashes in his chest. It was still rising and falling, indicating he was breathing, but only very slowly and unevenly. Stiles fell to his knees next to Derek and tried hard to remember if he had ever read anything useful during his countless hours of research that could guide him in this situation. What was he supposed to do with a practically dead werewolf?

Derek coughed. Stiles nearly jumped out of his skin in surprise, but then Derek was trying to get up and at the same time doubling over in pain, swaying left and right too far to convince Stiles he was in any way ready to stand again. Stiles caught Derek before he fell over. “My God, you’re heavy,” he groaned.

“Stiles?” Derek mumbled.

“The one and only. I think you should lie down for a bit, dude. I don’t think I’ll be able to hold you for much longer.”

Derek shook his head slowly, as if he was trying to shake off the terrible pain he was probably in. “No. No, I’m fine. I can walk.”

“Er, _no_ , you can’t. But go ahead and prove me right, if you insist.” Stiles really felt like dropping Derek, the stubborn sourwolf. The only thing stopping him was the fact Derek obviously needed him.

“Alphas are gone. Have to get to the warehouse.”

“The pack is okay. I mean, really okay, not okay like you are.”

“Good,” Derek said, but that didn’t seem to divert him from his plan to get to the warehouse. Stiles sighed and let Derek try to take a step forward, at which he nearly stumbled and fell face first to the ground, only prevented from this fate by Stiles catching hold of him again. Derek’s wounds were healing, and they were healing fast, but even Derek’s alpha body needed time to deal with damage this severe. Derek was not ready yet to walk, but since Stiles was pretty sure he would try to anyway, ignoring whatever logical and reasonable arguments Stiles would come up with, he figured he could just as well try to help him as best he could. He wormed his way under Derek’s arm, winding his own arm around Derek’s waist, and half carried, half shoved Derek forward.

The further they came, the less Derek was letting himself be supported by Stiles. He started carrying more and more of his own weight, eventually even shaking Stiles off completely once they’d almost reached the edge of the forest. Stiles rolled his shoulders. “Man, I have to repeat, you are _heavy_.”

A hand on his shoulder stopped Stiles. He turned around, expecting to see Derek scowl at him for being his annoying self, but instead finding Derek with a strange expression on his face. He looked like he might be trying to seem nice, which was so weird Stiles immediately decided it had to be something else and he was misinterpreting it. There was no misinterpreting Derek’s words, however. “Thanks, Stiles.”

Derek had never thanked him for anything. Stiles opened his mouth to say something, stunned. He closed it again, realizing there were no words coming out and he probably looked like a goldfish. Eventually, he just went for flailing his hands awkwardly. “That’s- That’s okay. No problem. _No problemo_ , in Spanish.”

Derek nodded, as if Stiles hadn’t just reacted as stupidly as he possibly could, seemingly satisfied to leave it at this. He turned and headed towards the entrance of the warehouse. Stiles followed two seconds later.

“You know, I could get used to this. A you with manners, I mean. It’s sort of nice to-”

Derek didn’t even look back. “Stiles, shut up.”

Stiles grinned. “Shutting up.”

**Author's Note:**

> This was my first Teen Wolf fic consisting of more than 100 words, so critique is very much welcome. Thank you for reading!


End file.
